For an office or the like, there is proposed an image forming apparatus having a so-called department control function for the number of copies, for preventing excess copying when a reserved number of copies set for copying exceeds the number of copiable sheets per department.
When the reserved number of copies exceeds the number of copiable sheets controlled by the department control function per department, this image forming apparatus displays a warning about this excess. After making copies by the number of copiable sheets, the image forming apparatus discards excess image data.
Due to this department control function, the image forming apparatus can prevent copying in excess of the number of copiable sheets previously allocated to each department, whereby the expenses can be saved in each department, and the user can be prompted to refrain from unnecessary copying.
If absolutely necessary image data are discarded when the reserved number of copies exceeds the number of copiable sheets, however, the image forming apparatus is not user-friendly. While all image data may conceivably be copied within the number of copiable sheets by using both surfaces of each copying sheet (a so-called DX (duplex) printing) or by copying image data for a plurality of sheets on a single surface of each sheet in a reduced size (a so-called N-in-1 printing), this may not be desirable for the user.